Wesleyan librarian alums unite!by Meredith Farkas

Andrea, one of my librarian heroes, has come up with this genius idea for a Librarians and Wesleyan Connection Meetup during ALA. Here is the announcement from the wiki:

Librarians & Wesleyan Connection Meet Up at the PLA President’s Reception, Hyatt Regency Chicago
McCormick Room/Regency Ballroom, 7:30pm.
If you went to Wesleyan, or are somehow associated with Wesleyan, and you happen to be a librarian, meet others like you at the PLA President’s Reception (the reception itself runs from 6:45pm-8pm). I might be wearing a Wes baseball cap, or, alternately, my Library Raid Gear, we’ll see. Email Andrea Mercado for more information.

Wesleyan has the most amazing library for a University of its size and I spent much time wandering through (and sleeping in) the stacks. Old libraries like that have such a magical quality. My decision to become an academic librarian is definitely related to those fond memories I have of Olin Library. I wonder how many other Wes alums were equally inspired by Olin. I graduated from Wes in ’99 and would love to share Wesleyan-related stories with other alums/librarians. I know there are a few of us out there! Otherwise, I’ll just have fun hanging with Andrea.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas is a faculty librarian at Portland Community College in Oregon and an adjunct faculty member at San Jose State University's SLIS program. She is the author of the book “Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication and Community Online” (Information Today, 2007) and writes the monthly column “Technology in Practice” for American Libraries. Meredith was honored in 2014 with the ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award, in 2008 and 2011 with the WISE Excellence in Online Education Award and in 2009 with the LITA/Library Hi Tech award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology. She has been writing the blog Information Wants to be Free since 2004.

3 Comments

Sorry I missed the meet up, I left on Monday afternoon. I was inspired to become a librarian by Olin; I worked in the Reserve Book Room in the basement for four years. I have fond memories of the entire library, but I liked my coworkers the best. Many pizzas and shakes were smuggled in, and we played lots of gin rummy. Ah, the days before ereserves and automation.

Well, the only other Wesleyan grad I found at ALA was Andrea, but we still managed to have fun at our own little reunion reminiscing about the Athenian Diner, MoCon, and O’Rourke’s (funny how so many of our memories centered around food…). I hope some day I’ll have the chance to meet both of you, Keri and Stephen!